MindCraft Challenges

John Gottman reports that improving friendship between romantic partners reduces negative interactions during conflict. Gottman teaches improving friendship as part of his marriage education program with multiple exercises, but there are simple everyday actions that people can take to build their friendships.

Challenge: Brenda O’Connell and her colleagues demonstrated that intentional gratitude and kindness towards friends can improve relationship quality. They asked people to either “Write and deliver a positive message (email, text, face-to-face) to someone in your social network (friend, family, colleague), thanking or praising them for something you are grateful for” or to engage in acts of kindness for someone in their social network at least 3 or 4 times in a week. Try this for yourself and see if those relationships improve.

Read More
Gottman’s assessment of interventions
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327698jfc0503_1
O’Connell’s friendship-building study
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1037860

McGregor and Holmes (1999) found that the stories we tell about conflict events in our relationships can bias our later memory of the event—taking on the story-telling role of a lawyer explaining why the other person was at fault led to more hurt and anger 8 weeks later than did taking on the role of an unbiased reporter. Many people also refused to take the perspective that the other person was innocent and they might be to blame—that is, they refused to do the task when assigned to take on the role of the other person’s lawyer.

On the other hand, satisfied romantic couples tell stories about each other that turn flaws into virtues—over time, those stories become true as people take on the qualities and roles of the stories they hear.

Reshaping our memories isn’t always a bad thing. For example, our memories of embarrassing situations or painful events shift over time so that we no longer feel the negative emotions in the same way.

Telling stories that shape our romantic partners and friends into better versions of themselves is a way to shape the imagined future function of memory systems. Try purposely telling stories about your friends (in their presence) for a week that emphasize their virtues and admirable qualities. Ask them to do the same for you (you can tell them that it is a psychology experiment, which is the truth). Does this type of positive storytelling change your perception of your relationship?

Read More

Emotional memory is malleable
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00312-1
The study of storytelling bias from the participation sheet:
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.403
How satisfied couples tell stories:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167294206004
Idealization becomes reality for romantic partners:
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.6.1155

How do we remember to do something in the future? Planning a future action and then remembering to actually do it is known as prospective memory. Peter Gollwitzer’s solution to the problem of prospective memory failure is implementation intentions: choosing a future cue and linking it to an intended action.

Challenge: Think of a common prospective memory failure you face (where you intended to do something but failed to do it when the moment arrived). Create an implementation intention for that prospective memory:

If I ________________, I will ________________.

Write down the implementation intention and place it somewhere you will see it every morning. Say it out loud to yourself when you see it. Did you avoid prospective memory failure?

Read More
The Psychology of Planning
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-021524-110536
Cues and implementation intentions
https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2014.975816
An early description of implementation intentions
https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493

Bob and Elizabeth Bjork refer to the types of effective learning techniques that challenge students as desirable difficulties. These techniques make studying more difficult in helpful ways so that performance on tests is less difficult.

Challenge: Choose one or more of the study techniques in green or yellow from the charts in class today to implement (I recommend practice testing if you have a class that requires learning facts or patterns). Use your change in study techniques to study for a relatively low-stakes test (for example, a quiz instead of a mid-term test). Pay attention to what study feels like and your performance on the test—our intuitions about study often lead to the incorrect belief that difficult study means that learning isn’t happening.

Read More
Learning in College
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616645770
Intuitions about spaced practice are reversed
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x

Challenge: Follow Rachel Baumsteiger’s prosocial intervention steps:

• Learn about prosociality (we did this in class)>
• Elevation—Watch a prosocial story from ESPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXVk5GBx-s
• Spend at least a minute each writing about:
• People you admire
• How you would change the world if you could
• 3-5 values (examples: courage, independence, discipline) that are meaningful to you
• Your imagined self in five years in your best possible future—describe what your life would be like
• A plan for how you could help others more over the next week
• Implement your plan. Take notes at the end of each day about how your prosocial actions impacted others. Were you more prosocial?

Read More
A Prosocial Elevation Intervention
https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1639507
Elevation increases tedious helping
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609359882
Elevation makes violence less enjoyable
https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000214

An earlier challenge was about making a habit, but this challenge is about breaking a habit. Wendy Wood and her colleagues discovered that when students transferred to a new university, their habits (exercising, TV watching, and reading) were disrupted because the cue that started the cycle of cue-habit-reinforcer was missing. This suggests avoiding cues to habits you want to change might be an important first step.

Challenge: Identify a habit that you want to block. Try to identify the context or situation that is the cue for your cue-habit-reinforcer cycle. It might be something in the environment or an internal state. Now, try to disrupt the cue so it can’t start the cycle (avoid certain places at certain times, plan actions that disrupt internal states). Did the disruption help you block an unwanted habit?

Read More:
Disrupting habits
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918
Habits and behavior change
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241246480

Can people use evaluative conditioning to help them like new habits? There is some preliminary evidence that this might be possible. Conroy and Kim set up people’s cellphones with rotating wallpaper on the lock screen that paired positive images with images of an activity that they wanted people to engage in more often (physical exercise). People did report liking and engaging in physical exercise more often during the experiment.

Challenge:
Set a goal: increasing the frequency of a desired behavior or forming a new habit. Create a set of 4 or 5 wallpapers to set as a rotating gallery for your phone lock screen (see the first ‘Read More’ link for an example—the picture of the behavior to increase should be one-half of the screen, and a paired positive image should be the other half). Track the target behavior or habit during the week. Did the evaluative conditioning seem to help you change behaviors?

Read More:

Evaluative conditioning via lock screen:
https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000886
More about evaluative conditioning:
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031815

Today, we learned that attention is limited and that those limitations affect conscious awareness. As we work on difficult tasks or face stressful situations, it is possible for the effective capacity of our attention to be depleted even further. However, there is good evidence that activities in nature, like birdwatching or nature walks, can restore depleted attention and increase well-being.

Challenge: Take a walk in nature (the Andrews University main campus is an arboretum with hiking paths accessible behind the wellness center and by the Pathfinder building) for more than 30 minutes every day for a week. Do you feel less depleted? Does your well-being or ability to focus improve?

Read More:
Cognitive benefits of natural environments
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02225.x

Birdwatching and nature walks improve college student well-being
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102306

The average effect size of natural environment influence is very large
https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294119884063

Wendy Wood suggests that we can move tasks from System 2 to System 1 by practicing the task regularly in the same context (the context will become a cue).

Challenge:
1. Choose a behavior that you want to make into a habit (read more books, go to gym, eat veggies).
2. Choose a context. When and where do you plan to do this new behavior? Specify a context (location, time).
3. Reward yourself for the behavior and track the development of your habit over several days using this scale and set of questions:

Disagree ①②③④⑤ Agree
Sometimes I start _____ before I realize I’m doing it.
______ is something I do without thinking.
______ is something I do automatically.
______ is something I do without having to consciously remember.

Read More:
Wendy Wood on habits: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721424124648

Listening is a multi-modal activity involving multiple senses and experiences with your own motor systems, allowing you to accurately simulate speech production. Imitating an unfamiliar accent improves those unconscious, real-time simulations and thus improves comprehension when listening to the practiced accent.

Challenge::
Practice imitating an unfamiliar accent. You might choose a teacher you are having trouble understanding, a friend, or even a podcast or video channel speaker. Practice the accent (not in front of them—be polite). Does your ability to understand improve?

Read More::
Imitation and comprehension::
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610389192:
Skilled mimics have better comprehension:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9562-y

Perception can be trained: People who practice certain video games, who receive intense training in Buddhist meditation, or who engage in immersive visualization during Christian prayer show improved performance on basic visual perception tasks. Notably for this challenge, the Christians who intentionally immersed themselves in a Biblical scene during prayer reported feeling God’s presence more in their daily lives.

Challenge:
In Steps to Christ, Ellen White describes prayer this way: “Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.” While praying this week, first read and visualize a passage (such as Ps. 23 or Is. 61:1-3) that provides a scene depicting God’s presence, then pray while visualizing talking to God as to a friend. Does this change your experience?

Read More:
Christian prayer and perception:
https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342090
Buddhist meditation and perception:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610371339
Video games and perception:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014345

Hindsight bias (“I knew it all along”, “I saw it coming all along”) can lead to problems with learning and decision-making. Because of hindsight bias, people fail to search long enough for explanations for mistakes or unwanted outcomes (cognitive myopia). People also believe they have the best understanding of situations (overconfidence). Thus, people avoid learning from mistakes.

Challenge:
One of the best ways to counteract hindsight bias is with the consider-the-opposite strategy. When faced with the results of a decision, you can use consider-the-opposite to think about what other outcomes could have occurred and what steps might have led to those other outcomes. You might also think about how other steps could lead to the same outcome. Try using consider-the-opposite to better understand educational or social outcomes for a week. Did you learn anything about alternative actions or possibilities?

Read More:
About hindsight bias:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612454303

Our perception of patterns isn’t the result of just one neuron firing—it’s made up of many neurons participating in pattern recognition. This is likely a reason that drawing is a powerful tool to shift our minds away from negative thoughts—drawing requires pattern-matching networks to create and check patterns as the artist is drawing.

Challenge:
Can taking time to draw help improve your mood? Carry some drawing paper or a sketchbook with you for a week. When you feel stressed or stuck with negative thoughts, spend 10 minutes drawing whatever you want. Rate your mood before and after on a scale like this:

😨 😦 ☹️ 😐 🙂 😀 😁

Read More:
Mood repair through art:
https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2011.557032
On using creativity to find meaning in life:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618771981
(see Table 1 for many ideas!)

Even though the firing rate of a single neuron limits its information-carrying capacity, the neurons in our brains work together to allow us to store and process massive amounts of information. One mystery of neuroscience is why human behavior and thought are as slow as if we were running our thoughts on neurons in serial (one after another) rather than in parallel. One possible reason is that human thinking requires comparing and updating many models of the world.

Challenge:
How would your life be different if you respected the slow and limited processing speed of the human mind? Plan a ‘slow moment’ (actually five minutes) to reflect on a memory, count your blessings, or otherwise savor your world. Try your ‘slow moment’ twice every day for a week. See the “Read More” section for the actual intervention with older adults.

Read More:
The paradox of slow human behavior:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.11.008
Many scholars debating a model of a multi-level, multi-timescale, iteratively refining model of the mind:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12000477
A savoring task (see the Intervention section):
https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464817693375

Ethan Kross and his colleagues have recommended using distanced talk to shift thinking from negative emotions and a cycle of rumination to positive actions to achieve goals (hope).

Challenge:
Use distanced self-talk five times daily for several days to coach yourself at points of stress, during negative thoughts, or when you feel you made a mistake. Note whether your control over your emotions, thoughts, and ability to take positive actions improves.

Read More:
How to change your self-talk:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419861411

About a decade ago, a music professor and a social work professor asked Jewish and Arab women in Israel to join in a music-listening experiment. The women listened to songs about either the Holocaust or fallen Israeli soldiers, sung by either a Jewish or Arab singer. Hearing a national song that did not reference the Israeli-Arab conflict (the Holocaust songs) sung by an Arab singer (an out-group member) reduced prejudice and humanized people from the other group.

Challenge:
You will need to involve another person—specifically someone from a different cultural, generational, racial, or religious background than you. Share songs (not linked to intergroup conflict) that represent your background with them and either teach them to sing or play them, or listen to the songs together. If they would like to share songs with you, accept the offer. Does your perception of a person from a different background change?

Read More:
The Israeli-Arab song study
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735616640599
Playing music together builds empathy in children
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735612440609
Music can be a tool to lower cultural prejudice
https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864918802331

One way to break the influence of stereotypes on a situation is to make stereotypes less likely to be activated and used as explanations for an individual’s actions. Perspective-taking is a way to break the automatic use of stereotypes as a default explanation.

To take someone else’s perspective, psychological scientists ask people to:

• visualize, read about, or listen to the person whose perspective they are going to take
• either imagine what the other person is currently thinking or
• imagine what they would be thinking if they were that person

Challenge:
Try taking the perspective of somebody from a group who is very different from you. Does this help you think about them as a person rather than a category?

Read More:
A review of perspective taking, including limits on who benefits from perspective taking:
https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12116
Perspective-taking to block racially-biased responses:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022308

Principle:
Believing incorrect information is a psychological problem. However, there are some easy actions that you can take when searching for information on the internet that can protect you from being misinformed.

Challenge:
Add lateral reading and click restraint into your habits for internet searching.

Read more:
On the psychology of misinformation:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-021-00006-y
On sharing misinformation:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007

MindCrafting is intentionally choosing actions from your psychological toolbox to shape your experiences and build skills for thriving. MindCrafting involves adapting credible evidence into actions, testing those actions, and recording results.

MindCrafting is turning on sandbox mode for the self.

MindCraft Challenges are part of the Introduction to Psychology course taught by Karl Bailey.